Socket 2011 CPUs priced similarly to Sandy Bridge-E

Even though the thermal paste is barely dry on Intel’s new Haswell CPU microarchitecture, its performance-oriented Ivy Bridge-E processors are due to be launched soon, and now we finally have some pricing info. According to VR-Zone, we’ll be seeing three Core i7 Ivy Bridge-E CPUs debuting around Q3 this year, including the 4820K, 4930K, and 4960X.

Whether you're a fan of the stealth design or not, you have to hand it to ECS for thinking outside the box on this one. The company posted on Facebook a picture of its X79R-AX Stealth, currently a concept motherboard unique in the fact that the majority of the printed circuit board (PCB) is hidden beneath a shroud that protects all the digital bits from damage, dust, and everything else.

If you’ve been thinking about building a new Ivy Bridge system, you’ve no doubt been drowning yourself in X79 reviews over the past few weeks. If you fit that description, Intel has one more board that should catch the attention of anyone who plans to build a high end rig. The DX79SR Extreme edition will be positioned above the DX79SI and DX79TO, and will carry a price tag and feature set to match.

If you've already laid out the dough for a Sandy Bridge-E proc and an X79 motherboard, there's no point skimping on the RAM. Lots of memory is, without a doubt, a good thing; lots of speedy memory is a very good thing. G.Skill's Ripjaws line of high performance RAM has a long history of pushing DDR3 to its limits, and the company continued the proud tradition at the CeBIT exhibition in Germany, where G.Skill showed off what it calls "the fastest quad channel memory" around.

Love him or hate him, Fatal1ty (or Johnathan Wendel, as his mother calls him) continues to have his gaming moniker plastered throughout the do-it-yourself (DIY) scene on a wide range of peripherals, and somebody's buying all these products up. Apparently still relevant, the famous Fatal1ty brand has found its way onto the new ASRock/Fatal1ty X79 Professional motherboard for gamers.

Boutique system builder AVADirect is breaking new ground today by being the first to offer Clevo's P270WM gaming notebook, the long anticipated successor to the popular Clevo X7200. What makes the Clevo P270WM so special is that it's rocking an Intel X79 foundation with Sandy Bridge-E processor options, a potent combination for the next generation of desktop replacements.

Let’s be frank: If you’re even thinking about buying into Intel’s deliciously fast LGA2011 platform this early, you are an enthusiast—Enthusiast with a capital-freaking-E, since you can’t even look at LGA2011 without buying a $550 chip.

So if you’re jumping in, you might as well use both feet. Asus’s P9X79 Deluxe certainly fits that bill, delivering cool features and a stout price tag: This X79-based board will set you back a cool $400.

“Deluxe” features on board include digital VRMs, Asus’s trademark UEFI, and built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, with a bundled smartphone app that enables you to remotely overclock and monitor your system. This board also has an all-new feature that lets you use a particular USB port to update its BIOS without a processor installed.

Nearly three out of four people rocking an Intel X79 system are sitting pretty on top of an Asus brand motherboard. That's the conclusion you can draw from the company's claim that its X79 series motherboards have gone on to grab a global market share of 70 percent of all boards built around Intel's enthusiast chipset, and it isn't the only one Asus says it's dominating.

Vin Diesel and the Fast and the Furious movie franchise helped popularize tricked out Civics and other modded imports, and maybe it was only a matter of time before it became vogue to sell motherboards sporting over-the-top eye candy. MSI continues with the aggressive motherboard theme that's become all the rage lately, but a peek at the company's new Big Bang XPower II mobo is all it takes to understand there's a serious board underneath all the fluff.

If you're a sports fan, you can't help but feel sorry for people living in Cleveland who watched in disgust as LeBron James took his talents to South Beach a year ago (and then delight when he choked in the NBA Finals), and haven't witnessed a hometown professional championship since 1964. Bummer. But hey, they still have AVADirect, a boutique system builder located in the outskirts of Cleveland, and while it'll never bring home a sports title, it has won other awards, including our own Kick Ass award just a few months months ago for a custom gaming PC. Perhaps looking to tackle a new challenge, AVADirect and its team of builders have starting putting together compact gaming and small form factor (SFF) systems based on Intel's X79 chipset.